A generative adversarial network model alternative to animal studies for clinical pathology assessment | Nature Communications – Xi Chen, Ruth Roberts, Zhichao Liu & Weida Tong , 2023 Break down of the equation 1. minG and maxD This is essentially the min-max game where the Generator (G) is trying to minimize the loss between the fake synthetic data and the realContinue reading “AnimalGAN Formula Breakdown”
Category Archives: cognition & neuroscience
Method behind AnimalGAN
A generative adversarial network model alternative to animal studies for clinical pathology assessment | Nature Communications – Xi Chen, Ruth Roberts, Zhichao Liu & Weida Tong , 2023 The source of the data: AnimalGAN was trained using Open TG-GATEs, a large, publicly available toxicology database that stores both: Traditional toxicology data and Toxicogenomic profiles. The data comes from experimentsContinue reading “Method behind AnimalGAN”
AnimalGAN Can Reduce Animal Testing
A generative adversarial network model alternative to animal studies for clinical pathology assessment – X Chen, R Roberts, Z Liu, W Tong, 2023 Can AI Replace Animal Testing? Animal studies are still the default. Animal studies have long been the backbone of drug and chemical safety testing. They give researchers rich, multi-layered data with parametersContinue reading “AnimalGAN Can Reduce Animal Testing”
Assessing Stress in Snakes through Shit and Sheds
Validation of a shed skin corticosterone enzyme immunoassay in the African House Snake (Lamprophis fuliginosus) and its evaluation in the Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus catenatus) – Berkvens et al. 2013 Introduction Corticosterone is the primary glucocorticoid produced in snakes. This glucocorticoid reflects stress in a short time interval when it is observed in blood/plasmaContinue reading “Assessing Stress in Snakes through Shit and Sheds”
Bats have personalities
Personality and behavioural syndromes in two species of fruit bats (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae) – Miguel et al., 2024 Introduction Evolution of behaviour works best when there is a wide variation in strategies used by individuals because this flexibility allows for populations to adapt better to environmental fluctuations Animal personality – defined as consistency of an individualsContinue reading “Bats have personalities”
Commentary – Social Living/Isolation Affects Mite Personality
Personality expression is shaped by the early experienced social context in predatory mites- A commentary on the Schausberger and Nguyen, 2024 paper by Chiara, 2025 As this paper is a commentary on a previous paper, there are no subheadings thus this post will mainly be bullet points The first researcher who may have studied personalityContinue reading “Commentary – Social Living/Isolation Affects Mite Personality”
Early Social Isolation Detrimentally Affects Zebrafish
Developmental Social Isolation affects adult behavior, social interaction, and dopamine metabolite levels in zebrafish – Shams et al. 2017 Introduction Social isolation early in life can have numerous negative impacts in adulthood like altered behavioural, physiological and neural development It is hard to find a subject to use that will not confound the effects ofContinue reading “Early Social Isolation Detrimentally Affects Zebrafish”
Social Living/Isolation Affects Mite Personality
Early social isolation disrupts adult personality expression in group-living mites – Schausberger and Nguyen, 2024 Introduction A critical social condition is whether or not newborns experience conspecifics during their early development If social isolation occurs very early in life, this can have dramatic adverse impacts on behavioural, physiological and other serious implications For example, socialContinue reading “Social Living/Isolation Affects Mite Personality”
Animal personality and social niches
Animal personality due to social niche specialization – Bergmueller & Taborsky, 2010 Definitions Animal Personality – Consistent differences between individuals in the behaviour across time and context Behavioural Consistency – this means that the behaviour of individuals remains stable over time while each individual specifically does not express the full range of behavioural trait valuesContinue reading “Animal personality and social niches”
Social stress on body and behaviour (mainly mammals)
Animal models of social stress: effects on behavior and brain neurochemical systems – Blanchard et al. 2001 This paper mainly focused on the effects of social stress, specifically victory and defeat amongst dominant and subordinate conspecifics. This paper didn’t really relate to reptiles so this post was shorter than most and only includes what IContinue reading “Social stress on body and behaviour (mainly mammals)”
